Food values continue to be measured in calories. The calorie is a unit of measurement, just as the inch or yard is a unit of measurement. The small calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram (about 20 drops) of water one degree. The large calorie is the amount of heat required to raise one kilogram (equal to about two and a quarter pounds) of water one degree centigrade.

Heat and energy are considered equivalent and transformable. Thus, the orthodox scientist considers that those foods that give off most heat per pound are the best foods for human consumption. It was decided that the average individual requires about 2,500 calories a day and diets were figured out on this basis. This was worked out simply by finding out how much people do eat and using this as a right or average standard. In fact, the matter was worked out by Voit, of Germany, on the basis of an enormous compilation of what German laborers, students, etc., actually do eat. It was presumed that people eat what they ought to eat in amount and kind, an assumption that is now known to be wholly false.

This method of determining food needs resulted in the absurd proposition that everybody ought to overeat because the average person does overeat. It led also to the ruinous notion that white flour, white sugar, denatured cereals, lard, etc., being high in caloric value, are man's best foods, while, fruits and green vegetables are almost foodless. It taught people to look upon vegetarians, fruitarians, and raw food advocates as cranks and fanatics.

This system of fire-box dietetics led to such ridiculous statements as the following from Dr. Richard C. Cabot's Handbook of Medicine: "Tomatoes are ninety-four per cent water; there is hardly any nutrition in them." "Lettuce for instance, is a food practically without value--nice and pleasant to look at, and valuable so far as it has dressing (made with oil). But the dressing is the only thing that has any food value." "If we take a teaspoonful of olive oil we are getting more food than if we took a large potato, for instance, because oil is a food which produces so much heat." "A workingman who buys a can of beans ought to know that he is getting many times the food for the same money as when he buys a can of tomatoes."

A few teaspoonfuls of olive oil a day should suffice to supply a man with all the food (heat units) he requires, but everyone nowadays knows that man cannot live on such a diet. The great value of lettuce is now everywhere recognized. Fruits and vegetables, formerly almost valueless, except in the estimation of a few cranks like Graham, Trall, Densmore, Page and Tilden, are coming to be more and more recognized for what they are--man's best food. It is even asserted on experimental evidence that green foods are absolutely necessary.

The estimated calorie requirements of a resting man weighing 160 lbs., is 2200 calories. Sleeping twenty-four hours, this man would expend only 1680 calories. The calorie requirements of woman are estimated to be much lower--a seamstress requiring 1800 calories a servant 2800 calories and a wash-woman 3200 calories. The seamstress requires fewer calories than the resting man, a thing I seriously doubt. Her requirements are but 120 calories more than that of the sleeping man.

Harrow says: "The calorie is a true guide to muscular activity; it seems to be no guide to the activity of the brain." Where, then, does "mental energy" come from?

The human body is more than a mere furnace or fire box into which we must continue to shovel fuel. The fuel value of food is the least valuable thing about it. White sugar is a very high grade fuel having a fuel value of 1750 calories a pound as compared to 165 calories for buttermilk, 100 calories for tomatoes and 95 calories for spinach. Yet animals fed on white sugar and water soon die. The nutritional value of food can no more be measured in calories than the value of water in the system can be stated in pounds or quarts, or in units of steam pressure.

A man may starve to death on a high calorie diet of white bread, white sugar, white rice and refined fat. He will starve on such a diet while consuming more calories each day than the standards call for. Indeed he will die quicker on a diet of this kind than he will if he takes nothing but water.

In measuring the caloric value of foods, only the combustible portions are considered. That portion of the food that does not burn, commonly referred to by the orthodox food scientist as "ash" (meaning ashes), and which is made up of the mineral content of the food, is not even considered. By such a standard oleomargarine with 3410 calories a pound is one of the greatest of food, while lemons with 155 calories, oranges with 150 calories and strawberries with 150 calories are practically worthless. Salt pork with 3555 calories a pound is a food for the gods by this standard, while celery and lettuce with only 65 calories each a pound and skim milk with but 165 calories consume more energy in digestion than they produce when oxidized. Yet neither oleomargarine nor salt pork will sustain life, health and growth. Animals fed on such a diet soon perish.

Let us bear in mind that the caloric value of food is no index to its surplus in acid or alkali elements, although most foods that rank highest in caloric value are decidedly acid-forming and rapidly break down the body.

Osborn and Mendell fed animals on a diet of denatured starches and fats, refined sugar and refined proteins and found that when so fed they rapidly declined in health. The addition of inorganic salts to the food was found to be absolutely valueless.

When the whey of milk was added to the diet their decline in health ceased. The refined sugars, starches, fats and proteins have a very high caloric value while they possess almost no food value. The whey contains none of the fats or proteins of milk but does contain iron, phosphorus, calcium, potassium and other organic salts. These tests prove that organic mineral salts are of more importance than heat units. Indeed, it may easily be shown that those foods that are the most deficient and worthless of all are the very foods which rank highest in fuel value.

Foods that are so high in caloric value that they are estimated by thousands, when fed to animals result in early death. Add to these foods the juices of foods of low caloric value and they live and grow.

Consider white bread with 1200 calories a pound and refined corn meal with 1625 calories a pound, and then think over the fact that high as these foods are in caloric value, they not only will not sustain life but actually produce death in animals fed upon these, exclusively, quicker than starvation itself. White sugar, oleomargarine, polished rice, salt pork, etc., do the same. Animals fed on these foods, or on tapioca, corn syrup, corn grits, cream of wheat, macaroni, puffed rice, corn starch, corn flakes, and other such foods possessing a high fuel value, sicken and die.